Existence
by arethesemyfeet
Summary: Here was where they stopped. And took in the silence and all the sounds that punctuated it. Here was where they breathed. Now he gasps for air. And wishes she would too.


I do not claim any possession of "Bones" or its characters. They belong to whoever they belong to. I'm just shamelessly using them for my own entertainment.

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Every night he wakes to a flash so bright it blinds him. He is always on the side of the bed opposite to the one he fell asleep in. His sheets are always drenched in sweat. His cheeks in tears. The blinds are always open. He can't fall asleep in darkness any more. And if he wakes in it, it consumes him and he finds himself clawing at anything so he can escape the cloying blackness. He dreams he is buried alive. But these are not Gravedigger nightmares. These are worse. He dreams he is encased in earth. He does not have 24 hours to live. All he has is the air in his lungs. If he opens his mouth, his eyes, tries to breathe through his nose, he just finds clay. Damp, mossy, smothering. He dreams he is her.

He wakes and the street lights illuminate the room. The hazy sounds of early morning Washington assault his ears but they sound further away than the streets outside. Like his ears are stuffed with cotton. With clay. With stiff limbs he rises from his damp bed and begins the nightly routine of changing sheets. He bundles them up and shoves them in the washing machine before retrieving a clean set from the closet. In the last few months all his bedclothes have become worn from excessive washing. They are threadbare in places. But he won't change them. He won't buy new ones. Won't discard the old. Like trash. Everything she touched is worth more than trash. Her touch is imprinted on everything in this house. Her bare feet padded these carpets. Her tender hands traced these walls. Her naked skin slept on these sheets. Her naked skin slept beneath his arms.

It is only on these mornings that he can bring himself to mourn her properly. During daylight hours he does not grieve. Tears do not spill from his eyes. The daytime belongs to the living. The nights he keeps for them. For what they had. He sits on the ground in front of the bay window in the sitting room. He wraps a blanket round his wasted frame and imagines he can still smell her scent on it. He stares out at the world through eyes that no longer care what they see. He had never known she had green fingers until they moved here. He remembers her eyes lighting up when he gave her free reign of the garden. He looks down on it now. Rose bushes are strangled by ivy in one corner. A beech tree, under which they used to have picnics on summer days, is surrounded by the decaying remains of its own dead leaves. Under the bay window, empty beds sit desolate with only the memories of cheerful daffodils and smiling daisies to sustain them. He has let it fall into disrepair. It had once been beautiful, their garden. He can barely look at it now when he leaves the house. There are too many memories of her in that square of land that faces him now. Too many images assault him. Its always the same one that takes over. Flashing over and over in his head. The bright lights. Her face, terrified, searching his for reassurance that she would be okay, that they would be okay. The daffodils on her lap scattering as the car hurtles over and over. The world a vortex and them being pulled under. Most days he wishes he never managed to surface again.

He sits at the window and watches the sky change colour. It was never truly black. It never can be in a city that never sleeps. It lights up with the neon of clubs and bars, the glow of street lamps, the pulsing flashing of emergency vehicles. But he has seen the other colours. The ones most people never take the time to see. The sky is a paintbox of colours. The pale orange that replaces the black of country spaces, the duck-egg blue that seeps through it at four am when the natural blue of the sky begins to make its entrance. She told him once why the sky was blue but he doesn't remember her words. Just her voice telling him. Right before sunrise had been her favourite colour. When the sun cast a blood-red glow on everything. For a few precious minutes the city is encased in the colour that means life. The colour that reflects the lifeline of each and every person in the city. Each living, breathing, sleeping person. Red was her favourite. He wonders if she can still see the sky where she is. The rational part of his mind tells him of course she can't. He ignores it.

He used to go for jogs in the early morning. When the world was beginning to rise and only a few people ventured into it. Sometimes she came with him. Her pace matching his. They ran in synch, neither having to regulate their footsteps for the benefit of the other. They had a natural rhythm. He doesn't jog any more. He walks the same route, his leg jarring painfully with each step. A pain he endures for the memories the route invokes in him. His walking stick breaks the silence as it cracks to the pavement with each step he takes. He hobbles down their street. The street they lived on. The street she no longer lives on and his breath puffs from his lungs and fogs in front of his face, clouding his glasses, so that for a few paces, the world loses focus and he feels like he is fighting his way through a memory. He enters the park two blocks away. He passes the tree they had childishly etched their names into one morning. He pauses and presses his hand to the wound in the bark. Tears spring to his eyes and he hastily blinks them back. A passing by jogger looks at him with concern but he simply nods in greeting and they resume their run. The path is rough beneath his withered feet. He stumbles but manages to right himself before he topples to the ground. He pauses halfway round the park and stops to rest on a bench. He traces the letters etched into the plaque on the bench. The name is familiar beneath his fingers. He receives an onslaught of memories as the pads of his fingers follow every stroke and line of her name. He recalls collapsing in a heap at this point along the track on several mornings, her falling on top of him, her laughter surrounding him, his arms reaching up to surround her waist. This had been their halfway point. Here they stopped to breathe, to relax aching muscles before pushing them again for another few laps. Here was where they stopped. And took in the silence and all the sounds that punctuated it. Here was where they breathed. Now he gasps for air. And wishes she would too.

His days are a routine that would have bored him before. They are only rarely punctuated by visitors who never stay very long. He doesn't remember the last time he saw his son. The sounds of his laughter echo in his head. And hers join them. Overpower them until he has to press his fingers against his eyeballs in an attempt to keep the threatening head ache at bay. He never succeeds and the pain of everything else combined with the exhaustion after his mornings excursion sends him into a deep sleep on the couch. He always wakes from this dream with the midday sun in his eyes and her ghost stirring from slumber in his arms. The moment never lasts as long as he wishes. And it disintegrates even quicker when he tries to hold on to it. Tries to hold on tighter. Tries to wrap his arms around the moment in time. Clings to it until she slips through his fingers like grains of sand.

Sometimes he remembers to eat but more often than not, his empty stomach has to remind him. He recalls days when he had to drag her to a food source. Now he eats ready meals and sometimes has the presence of mind to take his medication with the pathetic excuse for food. His doctor scolds him like a five year old every time he is called for a check-up. He tells him he won't get better if he doesn't try. He tells him he doesn't want to get better and it elicits a sad sigh from the doctor every time. He knows if she were here she would lecture him and it is always painful to remember that she is gone. Not that he ever forgets. His days are a slide-show of memories. She invades his senses. His every movement, his every thought and action. She is behind the few words he utters, the few smiles he bestows upon kindly strangers. She was and is his everything.

Every night he goes to sleep on clean sheets with the memory of her scent in his nose and the empty weight of her body in his arms. He tries not to think about her buried in earth, in a coffin that bears the same name as the plaque in the park. The bright light flashes as he closes his eyes and he sees the lorry charging toward their car as he drifts off to sleep. Every night, he holds her ghost close as the moment of her death pulls tears from his sleeping eyes. Every morning he wakes to the blinding flash and hopes it is the white light people see before they die. Six months without her has been more than he can bear just as forty-six years with her hadn't been enough. His aged body trudges through each day without her and every night he goes to sleep hoping that in the morning he will be with her in a place that is anywhere but here.

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_**FIN**_


End file.
